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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23762962">Test Kitchen Talks</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Backfired/pseuds/Backfired'>Backfired</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bon Appétit Test Kitchen (Web Series), NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Chefs, Cooking, Established Relationship, M/M, this is like 80 percent cooking im sorry guys</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:48:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,599</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23762962</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Backfired/pseuds/Backfired</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Learn how to make some delicious homemade penne pasta with Test Kitchen chef Lee Taeyong! With a surprise guest appearance from his husband, Kim Doyoung.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Lee Taeyong</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>114</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Test Kitchen Talks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Notification: A new video from <b>Bon Appétit</b> was just posted!</p>
<p>Pro Chefs Make 13 Kinds of Pantry Pasta | Test Kitchen Talks @ Home | Bon Appétit</p><hr/>
<p>The fourth recipe was from Lee Taeyong, a South Korean chef who had just joined the Test Kitchen staff last year and so far had only made a few guest appearances on other regular series, but was already well-loved. </p>
<p>The shot opened up on Taeyong’s modest kitchen, focused on him standing behind the small kitchen island, hands spread out on the countertop. He was wearing a large, soft hoodie and a pair of fashionably ripped jeans. A bowl of pasta and several smaller bowls full of the necessary ingredients sat on the table in front of him, with a strawberry patterned towel folded off to the side.</p>
<p>“Hey guys! So today we’re going to be making a tomato pasty, garlicky, cheesy, chickeny sort of really simple penne pasta. Let’s take this to the stove!” </p>
<p>The shot cut to a selfie shot of him holding the camera in one hand, angled so you could see him attempting to start up the stove, the clicking of the gas trying to ignite the flame clear in the background. </p>
<p>“This burner is always a problem,” He chuckled, and unceremoniously took the pan on the stove and brought it down with a smack on the stovetop. The flame immediately ignited.</p>
<p>“That always works,” he said, grinning into the camera as if he hadn’t just committed an atrocious cooking crime.</p>
<p>He brought the camera a bit closer and pointed to a small pot with a lip previously hidden behind the pan on one of the backburners. </p>
<p>“I’ve got some homemade chicken stock that I’m gonna use, kind of in place of pasta water.” </p>
<p>He brought the camera with him as he rummaged through his pantry, “Okay, I’m gonna drop the pasta in now.” And then a cut to the stovetop again as he added olive oil to the pan, “This pan’s heating up, so I’m gonna get plenty of olive oil into that,” he said absently, a ceramic pot full of salted pasta now boiling off to the side next to him.</p>
<p>He proceeded to throw some sliced garlic in, moving them around and pressing them down with a wooden spatula, “We have seven or eight cloves of garlic. I just peeled them and smashed them. So as soon as we start to see this brown, that’s when we’re going to throw in our tomato paste.” </p>
<p>He brought the camera up close to the pan, “As you can see, my stove is kind of uneven, so everything’s kind of pooling down here,” he brought the view back up to his face so you could see his cheeky grin, “We’re not in the Test Kitchen anymore, folks!”  </p>
<p>Another cut as time passed, showing Taeyong holding up a tube of tomato paste, the packaging a garish mix of red and yellow, “Tomato paste is one of my favorite ingredients!” He brought the camera back over his pan, showing how he used his spatula to move the garlic slices to one side of the pan. </p>
<p>“I’m just gonna move that over here to the other side of the pan, and then I’m gonna put a good half of the tube of tomato paste in there.” He squeezed the paste onto the pan, before sprinkling some chili from a small bowl, “Add plenty of ground aleppo chili.” </p>
<p>Then he poured in the chicken stock, which hit the pan with a satisfying sizzle. “Add this to the situation to kind of deglaze it,” he explained. </p>
<p>He stirred the mixture in the pan with his spatula, “Bits and pieces will kind of dissolve.” He brought a bottle of fish sauce into the camera view, “I don’t want it to taste like fish sauce pasta, I just want a little bit of fermented fish, anchovy flavor in there,” he said, pouring some of the sauce into the pan. </p>
<p>Another cut as the sauce came to a nice boil in the pan, “It’s really bubbling away, let me taste it!” Taeyong said, clear excitement in his voice as he dipped a finger into the sauce and took a lick. “Mmm, ooh!” he said, making plenty of satisfied noises. </p>
<p>He then took a stainless steel strainer and moved some of the boiled pasta from the ceramic pot on the other burner into the sizzling sauce, “Transfer it directly over there. This pasta is like <em> shy of </em> shy of al dente.” The pasta mixed in nicely with the sauce as he said, “You really wanna cook some of that delicious chickeny, tomato, garlicky situation right into it.” </p>
<p>Then he took the small pot that previously held the chicken stock and used it to add some pasta water to the mixture in the pan, “Just add like, maybe another half a cup of pasta water--just have that on deck.” Then he brought out another small bowl of grated cheese and set it near the pan on the stovetop, “Then grab our parm--I’m just gonna add a little handful at a time, and then a nice little knob of butter,” he grinned into the camera, “It’s pasta, not diet food.” </p>
<p>Taeyong gave the pasta in the pan a final stir, “Mmmm, yummy!” he hummed, mostly to himself. </p>
<p>One last cut as the camera was fixed once more on a shot of the kitchen island with the still steaming pan of hot pasta and a shallow porcelain bowl placed next to it on the countertop. Taeyong carefully scooped the pasta into the bowl with a wooden spatula with one hand, the other holding the pan’s handle to keep it steady.</p>
<p>“Something about being inside all day actually makes me hungrier, somehow,” he chuckled. </p>
<p>Then he took a pepper grinder and ground some onto the pasta on the plate, “Hit it with a little black pepper,” took a block of cheese and vigorously scraped it over a grater, “and then a little bit more grated parm...” </p>
<p>Finally, taking the finished plate in one hand, he scooped a generous amount of pasta up with a fork, taking one large, delicious bite. </p>
<p>“Mmm, oh god,” he said, making happy noises as he chewed, “There’s so much garlic flavor. You can’t really taste the fish sauce, but it gives it just this really nice umami sort of thing going on, mm!” </p>
<p>Taeyong came around the island to bring the plate up closer to the camera, showing the mouthwatering view of perfectly melted cheese flakes sitting atop creamy sauce and richly colored pasta. He ducked his head cutely under the plate so only the happy crinkle of his eyes showed, “Bon appétit!” he said. </p>
<p>Dish now complete, the next clip seemed to be a behind-the-scenes moment. Taeyong was still eating his pasta at the island, when he suddenly looked off to the side towards someone out of view. </p>
<p>“Want to try some?” He said, offering up a forkful of pasta, “I made it for work.” </p>
<p>An intrigued noise could be heard off camera before a figure in a soft sweater and lounge pants came into view. He shuffled towards Taeyong and opened his mouth as Taeyong fed him the forkful of pasta.</p>
<p>“Does it taste good?” Taeyong said in Korean, which was thankfully translated through the captions.</p>
<p>The other man chewed for a moment before humming in obvious approval, “It’s good!” he replied in Korean. “Why don’t you make pasta for me more often?” </p>
<p>Taeyong laughed, “I don’t want to get mercilessly criticized by you, obviously!” then turned back towards the camera, seeming to suddenly remember that he was still recording. He grinned mischievously.</p>
<p>“Hey, say hi to the viewers, Doyoung,” he chuckled as he nudged Doyoung to face the camera and switched back to English.</p>
<p>Doyoung startled as he finally noticed the camera, giving it a shy little wave. Taeyong laughed at the display of shyness and tugged him closer with a tight, one-armed hug.</p>
<p>“This is my husband, Doyoung,” he introduced to the viewers. “I’ve mentioned him a few times before and you guys have been dying to meet him, so here he finally is! You might be seeing him around more often now, actually, since we have to film these from home.” </p>
<p>Any loyal <em> Bon Appétit </em> viewer would indeed recognize the name of Taeyong’s enigmatic husband, who was known to be, through small snippets of information Taeyong tended to sprinkle throughout other videos, a classically trained French chef that worked at the famous three Michelin starred restaurant <em> Le Bernardin </em> near Central Park, Manhattan. Every time Taeyong even made a passing mention of him in a video, viewers would bombard the comment section with requests and demands that Doyoung make an appearance in a video, however brief. The fondness in Taeyong’s tone and the well-known fact that he had uprooted his entire life to move to New York with Doyoung so his husband could pursue his dream as a chef made the viewers unanimously agree that they were the cutest couple among the Test Kitchen chefs at <em> Bon Appétit.</em> </p>
<p>“Wait, what?” Doyoung's eyes widened in alarm at the reference to his apparent popularity, clearly having never been told about Taeyong’s anecdotes of him. </p>
<p>Pointedly ignoring him, Taeyong signed off with, “Well, anyway, thanks for joining us, and happy cooking!” And the video cut just as Doyoung seemed to round on Taeyong.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The top comment read:</p>
<p>RIP lee taeyong 1990-2020. a great chef who died at the hands of his husband kim doyoung. press F to pay respects 😔</p>
<p>👍 7.1K   👎  REPLY</p>
<p>▼ <strong>View 201 replies</strong></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>actual video: https://youtu.be/2ECoTEcPv4U (the recipe was directly stolen from Amiel lol)</p>
<p>u can tell i’ve been watching a lot of videos from bon appetit recently. god knows why because i’m terrible at cooking</p>
<p>my taedo yelling space -&gt; <a href="http://twitter.com/deductus">twitter</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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